Tricks From your Smartphone to Claim Back Your Power

Do you like to have control over your life? Of course you do. Everyone wants to have the power to do whatever they want, to have whatever they want to have, and to be whatever they want to be.

For the ones who actually believe they have the power over their lives, congratulations. Your belief system is where it should be, you just need your actions to match your thinking. When you believe you have power over your life, you are much quicker in catching yourself when an intelligent device like your smartphone is intruding your life a bit too much. The smartphone is so cleverly build and addictive, that the Founder of Apple, Steve Jobs himself, refrained his kids from using the iPhone and iPad. Although there are ways to break your phone addiction in case you find yourself checking your device a little too much.

The phone loves to take power over you. Steve Jobs knew this. The phone has a lot to offer, but it just wants your attention constantly. Myself I was a phone addict, I was bringing my phone everywhere with me. Even when I moved from the living room to the kitchen, I had to bring my mobile with me. I had to go to the toilet quickly? I wouldn’t go without my phone. Like you people who believe in their own power, I realized that my time was dominated by something other than my goals and objectives. I wasn’t growing as an individual. It was my phone that demanded my concentration all the time. I knew I can’t just never use my phone again. If my compulsive behavior can be called an addiction, I knew it was not similar to drugs which deserves complete abstinence. No, I knew I had to gain back control over the relationship in order to use my phone in a healthy way.

What many don’t know, is that the phone actually provides you with options to help you gain more control and power back in your life. They really provide ways to end your phone addiction. Let’s take a look at the notification option for example. The phone constantly blinks, beeps or buzzes when a notification comes in, this can be an email, comment from Facebook or WhatsApp message just to name a few examples. But you can turn it off! Start by turning off the notifications. Don’t let your phone make you decide when to look, but look when you can look. The more the phone interrupts you, the harder it becomes for you to focus on any activity.

The iOS12 from Apple has many more features that help you to refrain yourself more from your phone such as:

Do Not Disturb during bedtime: When you pick up your phone during the night, it will only show the time.

Turn off notifications for apps you’re no longer using: Your phone will alert you to apps you haven’t used in a while and allow you to shut off notifications entirely.

Grouped notifications: Your notifications will be grouped by the app they’re sent from. Now, you can “triage” a whole group of notifications by swiping them away.

Screen time: This feature will provide an activity summary that details how you used your iPhone or iPad over the course of a week. It will provide insight into how much time you’re spending on your phone and where you’re spending it, including which apps you’re using, how many times you pick up your phone, what’s drawing you in, and what’s sending you the most notifications.

App limits: You’ll be able to set time limits for individual apps. Once you’ve reached your limit, you’ll see a notification telling you to move on.

New parental controls: Parents will now be able to get notifications about their kids’ smartphone use.

Not only Apple is lately focusing on digital wellbeing, also Google introduced a few anti phone addiction features in their new OS Android P:

App dashboard: This gives you a bird’s-eye view of how you use your Android phone. You’ll see how long you’ve used your phone in a day and which apps you’ve used.

App timer: You can set a time limit for daily usage. After you’ve hit that, the app will grey out on your home screen and you won’t be able to launch it.

Do not disturb: this mode takes out all visual indicators, so you won’t get alerts to new messages, Snaps or emails.

Wind down: Lots of smartphones nowadays have a feature that blocks out blue light at bedtime. That’s the sort of light that can keep you up at night. Google’s new “Wind Down” function starts by eliminating blue light and then, as your bedtime approaches, starts to turn the screen to grayscale.

Okay fair enough, telling you about these solutions is like explaining that Marlboro is trying to solve society’s smoking problem. Although these settings are ways to overcome your phone addiction, they doesn’t really convince anybody. These are tools to facilitate your smartphone use and claim power over your time, energy and focus. But I admit, you can achieve only so much success with these features, especially if you are seriously clicking and liking your life away. More help is required to truly claim back your power.